When the end times come, Sam's ready to drive out of them

10 Questions for The Disaster Diaries author Sam Sheridan

10 Questions for The Disaster Diaries author Sam Sheridan

Sam Sheridan has an intimidating bio. In addition to stints in the U.S. Merchant Marines and a degree from Harvard, he’s worked construction at the South Pole, been a cowboy on the largest ranch in Montana, and toiled as a wildland firefighter, a sailor, and a wilderness EMT. He’s also written a couple books on his time as an amateur boxer, MMA fighter, and student of muay thai and jiu-jitsu.

You’d think that would make him the top draft pick for anyone’s fantasy survival team. But guys like Sam tend to be overachievers, so in the interest of really preparing for the end times, he challenged himself to learn the few practical, adaptable, post-apocalyptic skills he didn’t already possess. Then he wrote a book about the point and process of learning each of these. This is The Disaster Diaries: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Apocalypse.

On the occasion of his book’s release, we gave Sam a call to discuss stealing cars, outdriving zombies, and if there’s anything he wouldn’t do to survive. Highlights from our conversation follow.

10 Questions for The Disaster Diaries author Sam Sheridan

10 Questions for The Disaster Diaries author Sam Sheridan

Brett Berk: “You have quite an impressive, varied, and very butch resume. Are you working from some sort of lifelong checklist, or do you just enjoy a challenge?”

Sam Sheridan: “There’s no checklist. It’s just you sort of—I’m always looking for what’s the most fun thing to do at the moment. I definitely try to set up things and see if I can get things working that seem kind of extreme. But I have a million jobs I’ve tried for that I haven’t gotten—like, I tried to get hired as an oilrig firefighter once.”

We’re all going to die sometime, and when the bomb hits, I personally plan to drive into the mushroom cloud. Why this profound interest in resisting the apocalypse?

I think it’s human nature. You may say now that you hope you’ll be incinerated, but when an event actually happens, the natural thing is to choose life. Also, I recently had a son. When you’re a single guy, you think: if a tsunami comes, I’m a good swimmer. I’ll be fine. But when you have a family, you have other people who you’re responsible for.

You learn how to forage for food, perform close-range knife combat, and patch up traumatized family members. But you spend a lot of time discussing your “go bag”—the items you need to be ready for whatever comes. If you had to winnow that down to just three things, what would they be?

People always want lists—what’s the best this, what’s the best that. But you have to look at problems and think about what you’ll be facing and what tools you’ll need. Survival is very much like jazz. It’s improvisational. There’s no right way to do it, it’s just doing what works. In order to survive, you try to move within the rules, and play a jazz song.